PUBLIC MARKS from decembre with tags clip & online

22 October 2008 11:00

Xtranormal, a free 3D animation creation and sharing tool, is a seriously addictive sandbox for crafting miniature dramas, comedies, or whatever you can tell your little actors to do. The clip editor works like a storyboard that you drag story changes onto. So in one "scene," for example, you can have the camera switch to a close-up view, have your character wink and then recite some decent text-to-speech dialogue, then have them cross their arms and make the camera go for an overhead shot. You can add another character, change the backdrops, turn the camera positioning to automatic, and generally spend way too much time being an online Hitchcock (or Scorcese, or Tarantino, or any other name you care to drop). Building the movies takes a good chunk of time, and sometimes fails entirely, though that might be due to early-discovery traffic. Xtranormal is free to use, requires a sign-up to save your clips for later editing. Feel free to share links to your own mini-epics in the comments.